Existing comment:
"Deeds, Not Words"
Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Inez Milholland, and many other women spent time in Britain where they learned from, and participated in, the militant wing of the suffrage movement. The Women's Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, engaged in heckling, window smashing, and rock throwing to force the government to act on women's right. Paul and Burns, who were deeply involved in such actions, experienced prison sentences, hunger strikes, and force-feedings before they returned to America in 1912. Although the National Woman's Party never fully adopted the British militancy, its policy of holding the political party in power responsible, and maintaining pressure on the government through public spectacle and intense lobbying, led to passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. |